


Basic Skills

by therapychicken



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: David has hidden depths, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, I mean it is Flufftober after all, M/M, Married Life, Patrick is good at everything, Post-Canon, Romantic Fluff, being purposely vague here, someone teaching someone else how to ice skate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26721082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therapychicken/pseuds/therapychicken
Summary: Schitt's Creek is forming a hockey team, and David is so confused- why isn't Patrick already the team president (or whatever it's called)?
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 28
Kudos: 137
Collections: Rose Apothecary Flufftober 2020





	Basic Skills

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:**
> 
> Sparkle
> 
> (Warning for VERY loose interpretation of the prompt here)

It's the second winter they're married when David walks into the cafe and sees, on the new "community bulletin board" situation that Twyla has set up, the flyer. Schitt's Creek is apparently starting a hockey team to participate in the Greater Elms League- player auditions scheduled- text the below number. David would bet twenty bucks that if he texted that number, a long prior text chain with a lot of sexts and requests to buy milk would show up. This is exactly the kind of thing that Patrick would start-

But noooope. David now owes the universe twenty bucks. It's a local number, not a Toronto area one, and apparently the number belongs to someone named Kristen. Odd. 

That said, the number does NOT belong to Ronnie, which is a great start. Even if Patrick isn't the one who started this up, there's no way he'll want to miss it. David takes a minute to mourn the long empty Wednesday evenings and Saturdays ahead before he grabs a slip from the bottom of the flyer to take home for his husband. 

The things you do for love. 

**

That evening, over lasagna, David starts, "so, you're excited for hockey season?"

Patrick looks at him, bemused. "Sure. The Leafs were shaky last year but I think that now that they've traded-"

"No, no, no. I mean-" David slaps the piece of paper on the table in front of Patrick. Patrick picks it up and looks at it on both sides quizzically, and David realizes too late that there's only a name and phone number on there. 

"Should I know this Kristen person?" 

"She's starting a hockey team in Schitt's Creek. They're playing in a league. Honestly I was surprised you weren't already the president or whatever, but I figured that I should let you know, if you didn't already." 

Patrick is still looking over the paper, a strange expression on his face. "David, you know curling's my winter sport," he says. 

"Well, I mean, I know that, but first of all that's kind of sad and second of all there's still no team here."

Patrick nods, chagrined. "Yeah, Ronnie just won't give me a permit- she keeps talking about some curse that Twyla's grandmother made at the last bonspiel in the 80s...?"

"Well anyway," David continues, because he's trying to be _considerate_ here and Patrick isn't realizing, "I know you love your precious Leafs and you're the most Canadian sporty boy on the planet and I figured you might want to know about this."

"But you hate it when I join things! Especially in the winter, when you just want to curl up here with me in front of the fire with hot chocolate, making out. You literally just said that to me yesterday when I told you I was thinking about joining the caroling group now that it's going coed." 

Oh, come on. It's like he doesn't want his husband to do nice things for him. "I know I said that yesterday, and now I'm saying this today, and for the record I'm not _stopping_ you from caroling, I'm just saying that you'll be missing prime evening cuddling time, and that will be on your own head." He looks at Patrick curiously; he seems a bit uncomfortable, fidgety. "It's like you're trying to find excuses not to join this team," he says, and then freezes as Patrick turns bright red. 

Aha. Jackpot. 

"So you... are finding excuses not to join this team? You can just say no you don't want to, honey, I thought you would want to- I was just trying to suggest something you might like now that it's getting too cold for hiking-"

Patrick shifts in his seat, still red-faced. "No, it's really sweet of you, David, I just- I don't play hockey, that's all."

"Can I ask why?" David knows he should probably stop here, but he's kind of curious and also basically on a roll. "Are you afraid of going to hockey jail? Did a Zamboni eat your grandfather? Do you, like, not know how to skate?"

David hadn't known it was possible for Patrick to go even redder, but evidently it is. He puts his head in his hands and suddenly David just feels awful. How the fuck was he supposed to know, though? Patrick is, like, Canadian Sporty Spice- Maple Spice?- whatever, he had just never in a million years thought that his husband doesn't know how to _ice skate_. It's just backwards. 

"I'm sorry, honey," David says, patting Patrick on the shoulder. "I didn't mean to- embarrass you or whatever. I didn't realize, I'm sorry."

"No, it's fine," Patrick replies, muffled by the table. 

It doesn't _seem_ fine. "Is it?"

"Yeah, yeah. You had no way of knowing, you were just trying to do something nice for me." 

With a sigh Patrick sits himself up, and he looks basically fine, which is a relief- his heavy flush is fading and he mostly seems a bit ruffled. "So," David begins hesitantly, "is it okay if I ask, like, what happened? That was kind of a strong reaction to you having to reveal that there is actually, against all previous evidence, a talent that you don't have."

Patrick snorts. "Thanks, David. It's just- my mom put me in pee wee hockey, because of course she did, and my first lesson, I skidded all the way across the ice, knocked three other boys down, slammed into the wall, and ended up with a broken leg, a slashed forehead, and a petrifying fear of ever going near another pair of ice skates again."

"YIKES. That's intense. I'm not surprised you wouldn't want to go anywhere near all that again." David shimmies his chair over next to Patrick and runs his finger over his forehead. "No scar, I see." 

"Yeah, it healed pretty quickly, it wasn't that deep," Patrick replies, leaning into the press of David's hand. David gives Patrick's forehead a quick kiss before he scooches back to re-attack his lasagna. 

"Anyway," David says with his mouth full, "I guess under the circumstances you can forego hockey and cuddle with me on the couch instead." 

Patrick rolls his eyes as he says, "how generous of you, babe"; he links his foot around David's ankle under the table and suddenly David is _very_ excited for winter. So excited that he nearly misses it when Patrick follows that up with, "still doing caroling, though."

**

Before they'd hired an assistant, David and Patrick's date nights had been limited to whatever they could do on the Monday afternoons/evenings when they closed the store at three, if they'd managed to finish inventorying and ordering early enough to actually do anything fun. Now they feel fewer qualms about taking the afternoon off to do something fun, since the store can stay open; still, Elise is a high school student so they feel bad about doing it too often. 

It's David's turn to plan date night, and he has a robust backup plan in motion: pizza at Brick Oven Cafe and a drive in showing of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a movie that David hates with all his heart but that Patrick will definitely deserve if he ends up getting angry about David's first choice of activity. He has the necessary items for that tucked away in the trunk of the car and a healthy amount of nervousness considering that he's bringing his husband to do the one thing that he's been scared of since the age of six. 

They're approaching Elmdale when David follows Waze's directions away from downtown and Patrick asks, "wait, so where are we going?"

"Um," says David. He turns left into a parking lot in front of what looks like a big warehouse, and takes a deep breath as he parks. 

Patrick squints at the sign. "Ice-a-rama... oh. No. No, David. We're not doing this." 

David turns in his seat to look at Patrick; he looks irritated, but there's also a bit of apprehension in his eyes that David doesn't miss. "Look," David says, "I know that me trying to get you to do a sporty thing is very off-brand, and if you really don't want to do this it's fine, we have backup plans. But- I really think you'll like it, and I figured an indoor rink was better because there was no weather or leaves to worry about on the ice, and a good Zamboni, and I picked the quietest night of the week-" 

Patrick looks at him as he's speaking, wheedling, convincing, and the frustration in his gaze softens, even if the apprehension doesn't. "Fine," he says finally, "I'll give it a shot. But the SECOND I fall on my face and break my nose, we are done."

"First of all, you're not going to do that, and second of all, we're done when you say we're done- just give me a shot at showing you that it's fun. Seriously." 

Patrick looks around nervously as they enter the arena. David pays admission for them both and walks them over to the locker room, where he opens up his duffel bag and carefully lays out a towel before sitting down on one of the benches. Patrick laughs, and then laughs harder when he sees the rest of the contents of the bag. "David, we're only two people- why would we need three pairs of gloves?"

"You _know_ my fingers run cold, _sweetheart_ ," David says a bit more cattily than is necessary, because every minute of Patrick smirking over him being extra is another minute that he's not freaking out about what they're about to do. 

Patrick ruffles through the rest of the cold-weather gear before uncovering the two pairs of ice skates- a clunky pair of brown hockey skates and a delicate white pair of figure skates with silver rhinestones. "Where did you get these?"

"Well, yours are borrowed from Ray- and of course have been carefully sanitized in between. No amount of cleaning could possibly make anything they're renting here fit for my husband to wear, especially when I'm the one risking catching athlete's foot from you, so I figured better the known enemy. At least we know Ray showers."

"And the others? Did you borrow them from Jocelyn or something?"

David glares at him, affronted (well, some of it is a put on, but more than a little is pretty genuine, because, _Jocelyn_?). "Excuse me, but those are my skates. They're as close as I can find to the ones I had as a kid while also being a tenth of the price- which definitely makes a difference, let me tell you. I just didn't want to buy you any til I knew this was something you liked doing. Anyway, once your socks are on, time to lace up, honey."

David can see Patrick starting to freak out internally as he wobbles on the skates when he first stands, and David tightens and ties his laces as quickly as possible so that Patrick can feel a bit more secure. Once David is laced up, he takes Patrick's hand and walks them over to the entrance of the rink. Patrick grits his teeth as he wobbles. "I told you this was a bad idea. I can't walk in these fucking things."

Well, if Patrick is cursing before they've even gotten onto the ice then that's not a great start. "Look, I told you, as long as your ankles feel secure, it's fine if you're wobbling now- these aren't meant for walking in, they're meant for skating in. And speaking of-" They're at the rink entrance now, and Patrick is eyeing it suspiciously. 

He turns to David. "Okay, what am I doing first?" His eyes look resigned, steeled, like he's going to give this one try for David, and David can't help but kiss him quickly on the lips in gratitude- only to regret it when Patrick wobbles and swears as he tries to return the kiss. 

"Okay, kissing for another time then! First thing we're doing- we're going around once holding on to the wall. It's going to be scary when you put your skates on the ice, but you'll be holding onto the wall and you can hold on to me and you're going to be fine."

Patrick does not look like he _feels_ fine about this, and he yelps as he places his first foot on the ice and it slides. "This is- there is no way I am going to be fine," he says through gritted teeth, as he holds on to the wall with both hands. "Look at this, I can't even move, I'm stuck." 

"Hand over hand- it doesn't matter how slow, just hand over hand, inch your way around. Get used to the ice."

It takes a lot of grunting, wobbling, and Patrick complaining as he sees a kid zipping nimbly past him ("that little squirt, if I'd kept skating as a kid I'd be _way_ better than him." "...sure, honey, you tell him")- but they manage to complete a full circuit, and to David's satisfaction, by the end Patrick is launching himself off the wall as he moves forward in tiny spurts. David knew he'd be good at this. 

"That's so great, honey, you ready to get off the wall now?" 

Patrick starts and wobbles. "By myself?!" he chokes out. "No, no way." 

"No, not by yourself. You just hold onto my hands and I'll show you what to do." David gently prises Patrick's hands off the wall and can feel his grip tightening like a vise around his own hands, and has to steady himself as Patrick's weight falls forward. "Whoa, there. Okay, good, you're upright. Now, I'm going to skate backward and you just let your skates glide in pizza slices out-" he demonstrates- "and in." 

"So like diamonds."

"Sorry, what?" David hasn't been expecting pushback on his instructional methods; Patrick is smirking. 

"You said pizza slices, but if I'm doing a pizza slice out and then back in, that's more of a diamond, isn't it?"

David sighs. "Well, ideally, later on you'll- okay. Fine. Diamonds." If correcting him on terminology makes Patrick feel more in control, taking charge or whatever, then good for him. "You ready?"

Before Patrick can say either way, David launches backward, holding Patrick up as he tilts forward. "You heard what I said, slices- diamonds, whatever- out, and in. Out, and in." 

Patrick is breathing deeply, muttering "out, and in, out, and in," and it's pretty adorable, how he's focusing so hard on his skates and the ice and David's mantra of instructions. David can't tell if he's actually _enjoying_ it yet, but having something to concentrate on seems to be helping him feel a bit more comfortable. He makes sure to go slowly, match Patrick's pace. 

A few minutes later, David would be kind of bored from the repetitive movements except that he gets to watch Patrick slowly figure out that ice skating is actually fun. The creased concentration in his eyes is loosening, his glides are longer, and there's a small smile slowly growing in the corners of his mouth. 

"I can feel all the little sparkly bits of ice spraying over me," he says wonderingly.

"Oh," David rolls his eyes, "that was probably an employee- rink employees love being obnoxious and skating and showing off and churning up loads of ice in a big stop right in front of people who are learning and scaring them half to death."

"Sounds like you're totally not carrying any kind of a long-term grudge or anything," Patrick laughs, and he's laughing, which is great, which means he probably is enjoying himself. They glide a bit more, like they're in a not-very-intricate dance, and Patrick wobbles a bit when a particularly overambitiously long glide outward nearly sends his legs into the splits. Once David's neatly rescued him, Patrick asks, "how did you get so good at skating?"

"How do you know I'm so good at skating?" David asks back, smiling. 

Patrick laughs again. "I mean, the whole backward skating thing- being able to catch me- you have a lot of control, it looks like."

Maybe it takes control, but backwards skating is as easy as breathing to David, since he first mastered the skill and used it to teach Alexis to skate, so many years ago when they'd gone to New York for Christmas and Adelina had taken them to Rockefeller Center while their parents were at a holiday party. Alexis had wobbled and tantrumed and eventually just held on to David's waist as he'd carefully dragged her along to the exit, and she'd never actually learned to skate, unless she'd done it at a Russian mob boss's estate in Moscow or something like that. David had felt kind of helpless then, but at least he'd known he could skate backward. 

"Oh, this, it's nothing," he says now, airily. "Basic skills."

"Why did you learn to skate?" 

"Well, I was fourteen years old and had a massive crush on Michelle Kwan..."

Patrick laughs. "That sounds about right." They keep skating, around and around, David guiding them carefully around the asshole employees who keep trying to spook them. 

And Patrick feels... almost relaxed now in David's arms. As David skates backward in a long motion, Patrick skates forward, and he's already started lifting his skates off the ice on his own in order to glide forward more smoothly. David watches the ice shards glitter around their blades as he gently guides them to the wall at the entrance. 

Patrick looks up, startled, as they stop. "Are we done already?" he asks, and David does his best to hold in his smirk.

"No, but I think we're ready for a level up in our relationship," he quips, grinning down at Patrick. He holds out his double-gloved hand, wiggling his fingers as far as they can actually move under all the layers. "Will you hold my hand, Patrick?"

Patrick looks at his hand dubiously. "You think I'm ready...?"

"Ready for _handholding_ , after what you did to me in bed last night...?" David snickers as Patrick blushes and glares at him reproachfully. "You're not going to fall, you've gotten the hang of it now, and if you wobble a bit, I'll catch you. You know that."

"Yeah... yeah I do," Patrick says, breathing in before looking up to offer David his hand with a smile.

David grasps it firmly and tugs it close to him. "Good. Now remember what you were doing before? Picking your skate up off the ice to keep going? Just keep doing exactly like you were. You're going to be great."

And he starts them off, Patrick wobbling a bit as they get started and David keeping him balanced, the two of them pizza slicing across the ice, Patrick listing in a bit too much to the right on the turns and nearly crashes into David until he steers Patrick by the arm and twirls him in the right direction. Their skates are sparking showers of glittering ice crystals that fall on the ice and suddenly David hears an "oh" from next to him. Concerned, he takes a look at Patrick and sees his expression. 

Oh. Patrick gets it. David can feel a smile growing irrepressibly as he sees Patrick's face slacken as they glide across the ice, relax into their movements. They're hand in hand, the air rushing past their faces, little twinkling droplets of water and ice cascading around them (which mean that the ice is probably due for the Zamboni, but screw it, this is working for them). There's a weightless feeling of them flying together on the ice, Patrick's hand clasped tightly in David's, enough that David can almost forget that they're in a big echoing warehouse rather than under the night sky. 

"This is so much better on an outdoor rink," he breathes as they round a corner again. Next to him, he can feel Patrick gracefully navigate the turn; it's almost offensive how quickly he's picking this up, David's sure he wasn't nearly as fast when he was starting out. 

Once they're skating in a straight line again, David sees Patrick turning his face slightly toward him. He's smiling. "Is it?" 

"When I was at NYU I used to take the train up to Bryant Park sometimes and just skate for hours on the rink. It was free if you had your own skates, so I could practically just walk up to the ice and skate- weave around the other people and be in my own world. The stars sparkling in the sky and the skyscraper lights sparkling in the air and the ice sparkling under my feet." 

There's a silence as they turn another curve, and then Patrick says, "that sounds amazing. I was always so jealous of my friends who played hockey- it always seemed so freeing to just fly across the ice like that."

"And is it worth it now?" 

David almost skips a breath after he asks, because Patrick doesn't say anything, but instead he maneuvers them (and when did it become Patrick maneuvering David and not the other way around?) to the exit. David is about to ask why, see if something is wrong, when Patrick steps onto the padded floor off the rink, anchors himself firmly on dry land, and reaches up to David's face and kisses him, hard and fierce and passionate. David feels like he's melting on the inside from the kiss, even as he's freezing on the outside. 

"I never knew anything could feel like this, with you, David," Patrick whispers against David's mouth. 

David doesn't know quite what to do with his own mouth in response, besides kiss back, when suddenly they're interrupted by one of the obnoxious rink attendants. Apparently they have to clear off the ice for the Zamboni. 

Patrick retreats backward onto the floor, grinning, face reddened with the cold, exhilarated, and David can't resist- he skates backward onto the ice and does a spin. He thinks he's going to fall for a second- he hasn't done one of these at _least_ since college, maybe not even since skating camp, but it just feels like the right thing to do at the moment. He eases out into backward crossovers around the ice, does another spin, and then makes his way neatly to the exit right before the rink attendant manages to catch him. 

Patrick is beaming. "I _knew_ you were good at this, and not just 'basic skills.'"

David shrugs, smiling helplessly. "Well, I dabbled. Three lessons a week for two and a half years. Plus two summers of skating camp. I'm out of shape, actually."

From behind him David can hear the attendant muttering, "fucking showoff," and he snorts. Next to him Patrick puts an arm around him. "My fucking showoff," he murmurs, leaning into David's arm as he wobbles on his skates and starts to walk. 

"You don't want to wait til after the Zamboni's done and try some skating on your own?" David asks.

Patrick keeps shuffling his way back to the lockers. "Nah, I liked it with you," he says over his shoulder. "Plus, I'm tired, need some real pizza slices now." 

David laughs, because sometimes Patrick just gets him, and follows Patrick back to their stuff. As he's putting on his shoes, Patrick says, "anyway, I can try to skate myself at the pond all winter, if I get myself my own pair of skates." 

As they walk out to the car, Patrick giggling as he adjusts to his land legs again, David tries to imagine a pair of blue skates that coordinate with white ones with sparkling silver rhinestones. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the excellent people at Rose Apothecary for letting me into their Flufftober project!
> 
> This started off a random idea for a ficlet and is now almost 4k words... no idea how that happened! 
> 
> I just loved the idea of David having a hidden skill that Patrick doesn't and being the one to teach it to Patrick, and then Patrick completely taking to it so that now they can just skate together forever. 
> 
> I wrote this fic as something of a late bloomer myself when it comes to skating (as in, I'm complete shit), so I've tried to be as minimal with descriptions/terminology as I could because I barely know what I'm talking about. If I've made any egregious errors, let me know. This is how my friend taught me how to skate, though I took a lot longer to catch on than Patrick does here (and, arguably, still haven't). 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed- let me know what you think in the comments!


End file.
